From: "Clarity
Clarity" <thiscafe@hotmail.com>
Wondering if I would
qualify, being as I have been over the mentioned river. I did live on
the Ohio River once and now live near the Megunticook River, of which
the Mississippi is a missed-spelling and once removed kind of half-cousin
to some of the other rivers round and about.
I believe that the
Mississippi river used to be much much shorter when it was located in
Greece, but then most rivers lose a lot to the big water in passing....
of course, when in Athens, spell Mississippi differently or NO ONE will
have a clue as to what the hell you're talking about!!
Myth has it that the
Mississippi used to run under the London Bridge, but there is so little
real documentation on that fact that I almost don't include it here.
Small children back in the early 15oo's would launch small red sailboats
and wonder if they would ever reach New Orleans (these were smart kids
with vision). Another story tells of the time the young czar Nicholas
bought the Mississippi and had it installed on his country estate and
called it the Ural river (a bastardization of the word Y'all). It's
hard to remember after that exactly what happened, but there are a few
people who believe to this day that the Mississippi had a sort run beneath
the bridges of Paris. Insane you say...who's to tell. It could have
been the light playing tricks, or words lost in translation. Go figure.
Then there's the story
about the great pyramids and how the Nile needed help and called out
to all the rivers to come help assemble all those stones into a work
of art. Back then the Mississippi was spelled without the last "i"
on it, to this day you can still hear people along the river call it
the Mississipp, anyway, along comes the river and they somehow wrap
themselves around the stones and lift them one on top of the other until
they achieve one hell of a tourist spot with plenty of camel parking.
Few people know of this and is why so many are perplexedas to the true
origins water building. Just the same, it's always wonderful when someone
takes on a river as a subject, because they always become the subject
of it. Take the Ganges, you guessed it, it used to be the Mississippi.
One day it got enlightened, started talking about the flow, being in
the flow, flow with it....we still hear these wise and famous words
today. Rivers are roots that really start out small and before you know
you have a very long way around a very short subject.
If you get around
to talking about how the Mississippi was merely invented to give school
children a fun way to spell a word: Mi-SS-i-SS-i-PP-i, well then, you
might be digging in the right spot.
warmest regards, Clarity